I've done some reading about mplayer and the challenges the authors had about getting a reasonably fluid display working given the limitations of the N800's video display hardware. As far as I can tell, given reasonable expectatoins, this is now a solved problem. Could someone tell me if the following approach to watching videos on the N800 will work? (I'm going on a trip in a couple of weeks and have some DVDs around that I'll finally have the time to watch during the flight...)

1) Rip the DVDs using one's tool of choice
2) Transcode the files into MPEG4 using, e.g., DivX (I own a licensed copy) into MPEG4 at 360x240 resolution, perhaps 500kbps or so, 24 or 25fps or thereabouts, and MP3 audio at, say, 96 or 128kbps.
3) Dump the resultant file onto the N800, and run mplayer!

Does that sound as though it'll provide a decent playback "experience?" (i.e., generally solid video without tearing or dropped frames, etc.)

Thanks!

---Joel

The files you plan to make will probably play very well. Most of the hardware issues I've read about involve the limited display controller bandwidth. At resolutions of 400x240 or less it's not an issue. Higher resolutions also work very well with the latest mplayer and patched xserver. I'm playing 480x288x30fps 600k video 128k audio with no dropped frames.

Thanks for the response!

For converting the ripped DVD files for N800 or N770, try this software

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/mediaconverter/

There are presets there that work well. Easy to use.It has to be used after you ripped the dvds...

Let us know how it goes for you...

I tried, for a laugh, 640x384, 23fps,+/-400kbps and found it to be chopping up every ten seconds or so. The 400x240 ones OTOH play beautifully at almost any bitrate (I tend to go for lower rates to reduce file sizes; it's not as if I'm expecting home theatre results on a portable player anyway).

I did switch from Media Converter to VirtualDub (Xvid codec) for my re-encoding.

Hi Karel,

By right, you should expect just a few dropped frames. I did a test with slightly higher bitrates (512kbps) and the same 604x385 25 fps and it turned out pretty well. But I was using Media Converter.

More info here
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...&postcount=429

But my test was only 60 secs though. Not sure if prolonged video at those rates would make it choppy.

I do agree that 400x240 is VERY smooth now...at 30 fps... CPU is not even 50% taxed.


Luke

It was "Twelve Angry Men", and I played about ten minutes of it. I had it converted with VirtualDub, but I tend to give it a maximum file size, rather than a specific bitrate. This one was set at 350 MB, and gave a bitrate of av. 433kbps. Mplayer burped on it about every ten seconds, but once I re-coded it at 400x240, no more problems.

For me, 400x240 is more than enough; the bit I saw at higher resolution didn't make the movie-watching experience any more compelling. There is after all a limit to what the human eye can distinguish on a screen the size of the N800's, especially with moving pictures.

I haven't yet found a way to play VirtualDub's movies with the default Media Player, but this latest incarnation of Mplayer is so good, I'm probably not going to bother with the built in one anymore. If only there were a resume play function...

I've been playing about with this today using Handbrake http://handbrake.m0k.org/ with mixed success (you also need to have something which will disable copy protection on the DVD, the Handbrake website points you towards something called DVD43). I've been trying with 320x240 for an aspect ratio of 1.33, MPEG4 video AAC audio, bitrate 1000kbps (don't set any advanced settings!) and it seems to be of a reasonably watchable quality; if I deviated from any of these settings it produced a visible image but did not want to play sound (though it played fine on the PC). A 24 minute episode of Pee Wee's Playhouse was about 200MB in size!

I was initially able to play it through Orb (downloaded from Nokia's website) but then it complained about a certificate being invalid and won't let me back onto the site (on the N800 side). I tried using Tversity but it just hung on the N800. If I copied the file onto the removable media it also played fine and I think this is the best strategy for now.

I've tried using Canola and the inbuilt media player to play the video files; both seem a similar quality of picture but media player seems to be slightly better on the sound quality.

Just to add another variation. I have used iriverter to encode my movies. From another message posted on this board is a Nokia N800 configuration file that has the 400x240 size and don't remember the bit rate right off the top of my head but I seem to remember around 800. Resultant files are in the 700mb to 1G range and are .avi. Playing with the latest mplayer is extremely fluid and no skips or tearing. I haven't played a full length movie yet, so can't speak to anything beyond 20 minutes yet. I have two 8Gb transcend SDHC cards with one filled with movies and the other for music. Very capable device!

Karel, what are the advantages to using VirtualDub?